


remember who held you

by Anonymous



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, F/M, Molestation, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence, Step-Sibling Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-06-27 23:10:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19799695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "say you understand!" Max shouts, wielding the nail bat.trigger warnings abound; nothing graphic but it's not easy.





	1. Chapter 1

Things were okay, at first. 

He was too small to hurt her.

He yanked pigtails and stole Barbies; spat in her cereal and twisted forearms until she burned. 

Mommy said he was just being a boy. Neil told her to toughen up and fight back.

Max never could. Her hands were too small and her nails were too short. She could shriek but eventually Mommy and Neil ignored that too. 

Just like Max ignored her own mother’s screams in the night.

They weren’t the screams that she started hearing from Billy’s room when he was 15 and she was 11 but they made her pull her pillow over her ears regardless. She’d catch whiffs of cheap perfume and dirty liquor down the hall if she got up for a drink in the night, always a different girl sneaking down the stairs, open blouse and shoes in her hands.

Later that year, Mommy sits down and tells Max she’s growing up and talks about bras and periods. 

“Boys,” Mommy starts, looking down the hallway, “are starting to notice you.”

Billy gets drunk; he is 16 and obsessed with working out and with girls. He’s in a foul mood because Neil and Mommy left him in charge while they went to dinner. 

“You’re all grown up,” he slurs. He isn’t looking at her face. She tries to turn away but he grabs her wrist and her bones creak under his sweating hand. “Look at me,” he says. She knows by that tone not to ignore him so she looks him directly at him. 

He kisses her like she’s one of the girls he’s brought home. His tongue is slimy in her mouth and he tastes like nail polish remover. He grabs her by the back of the neck, hand tightening in her hair. His other hand rests above her knee, nails digging into the soft skin he finds. He groans and she thinks he sounds like an animal.

She pulls away and runs upstairs.

“Don’t tell dad,” is all she hears.

She tells herself he was drunk and he forgot who she was. He leaves her alone, honestly, for awhile after that. It’s summer and he’s never home. Max brushes her hair in peace and even Mommy seems more relaxed. Neil only screams at them once; after Mommy left dinner in the stove for too long because she had to use the little ladies room. He pushes Mommy’s head into the cabinet and she cuts her temple. She smiles all through dinner, blood running down the side of her face. 

“May I be excused, Neil?” she asks halfway through dinner. 

“No.”

Max wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of her door opening. She used to dream it would be Mommy, saying they’re leaving. Instead her door clicks shut quietly, so quietly that Max thinks she’s still half asleep and imagining things. Liquor, she smells liquor. Liquor and sweat. She hears grunting and fumbling, but tells herself if she pretends to be asleep, he’ll go away. 

“Max,” Billy whispers. “it’s me.”

She knows who it is. She stays where she is, on her side and facing the wall.

“Move over.”

She doesn’t.  
“Maxine.”

She scoots slightly, closer to the wall. He sighs happily. 

Her bed dips as he crawls under her blanket. He presses himself along the length of her, sliding an arm over her waist and hauling her body against his. He’s not naked, Max notes, but he might as well be. His body is sweaty and overheated and burns her though her tank top and pajama shorts. His lips are wet as he presses them to her shoulder and he hums contentedly as he makes himself comfortable in her bed. He falls asleep quickly but if Max tries to move, he tightens his grip on her waist and pulls her closer. 

She can feel him when he does that; _all_ of him. She’s snuck her mom’s _Cosmo_ and 7th grade girls think they’re hot shit when they talk about their older boyfriends; she has a general idea of what’s going on in Billy’s scant underwear. She tries to squirm away but his hand on her hip bruises and fear makes her freeze. 

“You’re so pretty,” he whispers, hips rubbing against her. His mouth is at her neck now and his breath is rancid against her clammy skin. “Gonna steal you away,” he babbles as he rubs harder, panting and grunting. “Make sure nobody ever hurts you. Keep you away.”

Max says nothing. She stares at the wall.

“Mine,” is all Billy says when he’s finished. A final kiss to her cheek and he falls asleep for real this time. 

Max sneaks into the bathroom and changes her pajamas; the ones she had on were wet and sticky. When she comes back to her room, her door is open and Billy’s is shut.

Later that night, she takes the old pajamas outside and burns them in a trashcan. She doesn’t answer Neil when he asks what she’s doing and Mommy doesn’t get out of bed the next day as a result of her defiance. 

At first it only happened when Billy couldn’t get a girl. 

Then it only happened when Billy was drunk. 

He got too blasted on Neil’s whiskey one night and couldn’t perform for the girl he’d brought home. She’d laughed on her way back to her car, cackling as she slammed the door and drove off.

Max had tried to block her door by sticking her vanity chair under the doorknob but Billy broke that barrier with very little effort. She wasn’t strong enough to move her dresser or bookshelf, so instead she stares at the wall. 

Billy pushes her onto her back this time. He touches her face and shushes her as she starts to wail. 

“I can’t—” he whispers, stroking her face. “I won’t—”

“Billy,” she whispers. She can’t seem to say anything else. She almost cries for help but he puts his hand over her mouth. 

“Say it,” he demands quietly, moving the hand off her mouth. He holds her to the bed with one hand pinning her wrist down. He touches her collarbone gently. Lower still. He pinches the baby skin of her stomach and snaps the waistband of her shorts. “Please.”

“B—”

“Say it!” He’s almost roaring now and the hand on her wrist tightens and she fears he might snap her wrist.

“I— I love you. I love you, Billy.”

He kisses her. He doesn’t care that she doesn’t kiss back. He insists on staying close, wrapping his arms around her and laying his head on her breast. He takes one of her hands and places it on the top of his head, furthering their play at intimacy. Max understands and begins to twirl his hair, running her small fingers though the curls and stroking. He almost purrs and falls asleep like that, trapping Max beneath him. They stay like that well past dawn, She hears a door open down the hall and prays that Mommy will come wake her up and see this madness in her daughter’s bed. 

Instead she hears Neil: “Billy’s not in his room but his car is here. Must be at the beach.”

Nobody comes for Max. 

School is the only place she can escape Billy. In the mornings, he pushed her into walls or pulled her hair as she tried to eat breakfast. He mocked her over dinner, flipping books out of her hands or pushing on her elbows so she scribbled over her homework. When he used to say “I have plans tonight,” over dinner, Max would sigh in relief and plan out a bubblebath. 

Now she just knows he’s going to wake her up again. 

Shortly after Max turns 13, an awkward boy in her math class invites her over for pizza. She smiles and feels giddy as she says yes. 

“Tommy invited me over for dinner tomorrow night,” Max says to her mom over dinner. “He lives on the other end of the subdivision. Can I go if I’m home by 9:00pm?”

Mommy doesn’t answer and looks at Neil.

“8:30 and not a second later,” Neil says without looking up from his plate.

Max squeals with delight. 

Tommy is as much of a gentleman as he can be. He tries to hold her hand but freaks himself out. His mother, delightful but overbearing, doesn’t help as she inches the door to the den open a little bit more and more every time she walks by. The pizza is delicious and they listen to records together. He tries to kiss her cheek but ends up awkwardly ramming his nose into the side of her face. 

“I had a really nice time,” Max says at 8:21pm as she gets ready to skate home. 

“Yeah, s-s-same,” Tommy stutters. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Max skates home with a smile on her face. She plops herself down on the family couch at exactly 8:27pm. Even Neil manages a tight smile at Max’s attitude. 

Mommy is tense when she tucks Max in that night. At 13, Max should be telling her she’s too old for this but it’s the only time Max can get her mother alone. She suspects Mommy knows this as well. 

“Did Tommy…” Mommy starts stiffly. She gestures instead of speaking.

Max shakes her head. “We listened to The Beatles and ate mushroom supreme pizza.”

“Has a boy ever—” Mommy stops herself. “Do you know when a boy…likes you, Maxine?”

“Tommy asked me on a date, mom,” Max says incredulously. “I think he likes me.”

Mommy clears her throat. “If a boy comes to you,” she starts, eyes nervous, “and hurts you, you tell me. Do you understand, Maxine?”

Silence.

More silence.

“I will, mom. Promise.”

“You left me.”

Max jolts awake. It’s 1:33am. The light in her bedroom is turned on and it blinds her.

“You little _whore_.”

“Billy?”

“Fuckin’ _slut_.”

Billy is seated at her vanity, bottle of beer loose in his fist. He snubs out his cigarette on the vanity table, marring the sea-foam green paint. 

Max blinks as her eyes adjust. There’s a fresh black eye on Billy and she thinks he’s been crying. She had heard him and Neil fighting in the garage earlier but Mommy had told her they were just arguing about cars. 

“How was your date?” he sneers. “Did little Tommy fuck you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Max defends. “We ate pizza and his mom checked on us every five minutes.”

“Boys can be fast when they mean it,” Billy explains. He takes a swig of his beer and sets it on the table behind him. “He’d be in and out before you even felt anything.”

Max says nothing. She isn’t sure what to say. 

“ _God_ ,” Billy grunts. “You’re so beautiful.”

Max flushes red at that. She hates it when he says that. 

“Take you down to the boardwalk,” he fantasizes, pulling on the front of his jeans. “let those photographers see you. Put you in magazines. In the movies.”

“I don’t wanna,” Max says. 

Billy ignores her. “You gotta do yourself up more. Girls your age wear makeup and dresses.”

“I don’t like dresses.”

He sits on the edge of her bed and grabs her wrist again. He kisses the tender inside of her palm.

“I mean it, Max,” he whispers. “I’m going to take you away someday.”

“Don’t.”

“You’re the only one who understands,” he continues. “Not Tommy. He doesn’t know you like I know you.”

Silence. Max finds silence is her best weapon. She no longer cries out when Billy twists her arm in the morning or pinches her at the dinner table. 

Billy starts crying at her silence, eyes red and tears falling onto his jeans. “Max,” he whispers. “You can’t leave me.”

Max feels something akin to sympathy. But then he grabs her and pulls her into his lap. He’s…against her, even as he weeps into her skin. 

“Say it,” he sobs. “Maxine, say it.” 

“I love you, Billy.”

He sobs again, this time in pleasure. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended on making this a twoshot but there's too much for that.
> 
> chapter 3 will be season 2 and chapter 4 will be season three so spoilers.

Billy gets suspended six months later for fighting. Specifically he ran over another student with his car. Trent wasn’t injured seriously but that foot might not ever heal correctly so goodbye promising basketball career.

That car was sold to pay the legal fees. At the request of their lawyer, they say goodbye to sunny California and packed up for Hawkins, Indiana where Mommy had a fourth cousin through divorce who helped them find a house after Neil’s transfer was approved. 

The first day they drive, Neil and Mommy sit firmly in the front seats of the car. No radio. No talking. Just silence. If either one of them look just right in the rearview mirror, they’ll see Billy’s dirty hand sneaking into the wide leg of Max’s cotton shorts. 

They don’t look. 

Max braces for the worst, clenching her thighs together. Billy chuckles, a rumble she feels more in her chest than actually hears, but opts to keep his hand rubbing wide circles on the tender flesh of inner thigh. More than once, his thumb catches on the outer band of her underpants but he goes no further. 

They stay in a hotel that night with Neil announcing that he’s booked separate rooms. Max’s heart flutters but immediately drops as Neil follows it with “Billy, you’ll have to share a room with your sister.”

“She’s not my sister,” Billy sneers. 

“Billy—” Mommy starts but Neil grabs her upper arm harshly. Mommy swallows and looks at Max with sad eyes.

“We’ll start back up tomorrow at 9:00am.” Neil hands Billy the key to their room before leading Mommy to theirs. 

There’s two beds in the room; at least Neil knew better than to try and make them share a bed. Billy claims the bed nearest to the door and Max sets her bag down on the bed closer to the wall. The beds are generous, if a little worn. Billy sets at fiddling with the radio and he gives a vague grunt as Max says she needs a shower. 

The bathroom door locks. Just like the bathroom door at home locked. Bathrooms were also safe spaces. 

Over the last six months, Billy had gotten bolder and needier. He was no longer satisfied to sneak into her room when he was drunk or lonely.

Two days before the accident, when Mommy was out at the store and Neil was at work, Billy pulled Max into Neil’s armchair and kept her there for two and a half hours. He had an arm looped over her waist, keeping her back pressed to his chest. His other hand gripped her inner thigh, holding her legs open and draped over his own thighs. He wore sweatpants and nothing else, _nothing_ else. Occasionally the hand around her waist would drift and clamp over her small breast, anchoring her to his body.

“Let me go,” Max had initially fought against him, planting her feet on the plush carpet and trying to push herself up. 

“I will, I will,” he promised, voice distant and dreamy. “Just say it one more time. Please Maxine, one more time.” 

“Billy…”

“Max,” he whispered, burying his face in her hair, “do you love me?”

“Su— yes, Billy.”

His hips rolled against her and his grip turned vise-like against her. “Say it. Keep saying it. Say until I tell you to stop. Max. Max. _Maxine._ ”

She gave up on getting away after the first time; ten grueling minutes of crushing his hips against her while Max mindlessly told him he was perfect and she loved him. She found herself just blankly saying “yes Billy” to whatever he asked of her. 

Yes Billy, I love you.

Yes Billy, you’re perfect.

Yes Billy, you protect me.

Yes Billy, you keep me safe. 

When he was done, he pushed on her back to angle her forward in his lap. That scared her; the new position. He’d never…moved her off his lap and liked to keep her body close to his. She was worried he was sick of it and would go further, would try and touch her more. 

He never undressed her and never touched underneath where her underwear covered. He was partial to her shoulders and her waist but preferred her hips and thighs. On one drunken occasion, he took her feet in his hands and kissed the tops of them. He wedged cotton balls between her toes and painted them candy apple red all while rubbing himself against the delicate arches of her dirty feet. The next afternoon, when he saw that she had taken the polish off, he punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her.

“Don’t be a bitch, Max.”

Once Billy had moved her in the chair, he took his hands off of her, but instead reached over for a brush that Mommy had stashed in the end table between the chair and the couch. Max tried to make a run for it, but Billy grabbed her by her hair, _hard_ , and pulled her back. Max cried out without thinking and Billy cracked the wooden hairbrush against her thigh as a punishment. 

“I’m trying to _be nice_ , Max,” he scolded, yanking her into his lap. “It’s what brothers _do_.”

“This is not—”

“Shut it, Maxine!” He started pulling Mommy’s brush though her long hair, murmuring sweetness into her skin as he did. “I graduate high school next year, Max.”

“No shit,” she snarked and he pulled harder on the brush than necessary. 

“I’m going to be a big boy soon,” he continued. “I’ve got a little money saved up. Gonna get out of here the day after graduation. Get a little apartment on the beach.”

Max stayed quiet; she knew what was coming. Billy had tossed the brush carelessly to the floor and was now running his fingers through her hair. 

“In the night,” he went on, his voice dropping to a groan against her temple, “you’ll pack your bags. Jus-jus’ pack what you need, the essentials. Throw the bags out of your window; I’ll catch them and throw them in my car. And we’ll run. I’ll take you so far away from him. From here. Jus’ you and me, Max. On the beach. A new school where they don’t know you, don’t know us. Daddy’s dead. Mommy left. Now it’s just a brother and a sister on their own. We’ll take care of each other.”

Max whined, uncomfortable and irritated, but Billy misinterpreted the noise and breathed a _yes_ into her hairline. 

“Can you take care of me, Max? Make me dinner every night when I get home from work. Keep the house clean. I’ll make sure you never want for anything. I’ll take care of you. Nobody will love you like I love you.”

Max’s stomach twists and she feels like she’s about to be sick. “Billy, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“You can wait,” Billy purrs, settling her back against his hips. 

Hours later, when they hear the garage door and Billy all but pushes her to the floor, Max runs into the bathroom and immediately vomits. She barely makes it into the toilet but manages to clean up before Neil or Mommy see it. She skips dinner by saying she thinks she’s got the flu because her lab partner was out sick. 

“Feel better, Max,” Mommy smiles. 

Then the accident happened and now Max finds herself staring at her own reflection in the hotel bathroom. She rubbed at her throat as the bathroom filled with steam from the shower. She felt like she looked a decade older than this time last year; her eyes were dull and when she smiled at herself, the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her hair was darkening and losing its curl but her mother blamed puberty and hormones. She was sent home from school on rainy Tuesday afternoon when the boy who sat next to her in English showed up wearing the same cologne as Billy— she’d gone into hysterics and vomited in the school hallway when she’d ran out of the classroom. The other kids laughed at her and she told them she had fallen asleep in class and had a nightmare when she returned the next day.

She once went four days without a bath to try and get Billy to go away but he twisted her arm violently behind her back and threatened to strip her down and throw her in the tub unless she did it herself. Then when he held her, he sniffed her wet hair deeply and breathed out fantasies of her surrounded by bubbles, champagne, and candles and Billy washed her hair.

Billy is asleep, truly asleep, when Max comes out of the bathroom. 

“Billy?”

He snuffles and grunts before rolling over. Max decides not to push her luck and gets in her own bed. For the first time in almost a year, Max gets a full night of sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the musical inspiration for this chapter was either Meg Myers' "Desire" or "#1 Crush" by Garbage. that probably isn't healthy but nothing about this is healthy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this might be the most graphic chapter yet. 
> 
> cw; molestation, assault, mentions of pregnancy

Hawkins is _bad_. The town is ridiculously small compared to where they came from; Max can skate from one end of downtown to the other in less than 10 minutes. There’s a smell to the air and everyone dresses like it’s 5 years prior. Max, used to salt and ocean air, feels the arid climate of Hawkins drying out her lungs. 

Their house is much nicer than the one in California— cost of living and all. Max has her own bathroom and even better, she has a door with a lock. But tensions are high when they move into the home. Billy leaves on foot around noon on their first day in the house and rides back around 8:00pm in a battered old Camaro. He tells Neil to fuck off when he asks where Billy has been all day. 

“You use that language with me, boy?” Neil drawls, pushing Billy into a china hutch. “In my fuckin’ home?”

Billy’s hair catches on the knob and a small chunk of hair and flesh is left embedded when Neil is done with him. Billy doesn’t say anything about it. Mommy cleans it off an hour later. Neil takes his aggression out on Billy and on Mommy and Max fears she’s next. She’s quiet like a mouse and just as docile. She keeps her head down and says “yes Neil,” when he asks her to do something. 

Thankfully, she’s barely a blip on Neil’s radar. He barely spoke to her the first year he and Mommy dated and Mommy had to beg to let her be involved in the wedding ceremony. Max feels like she could fade into a wall when Neil was around and he would never notice. She got in trouble, yeah, bad grades and a fist fight in sixth grade, but Neil would take it out on Mommy, screaming she was a dumb whore who raised a bad kid. 

Billy doesn’t come to her room anymore. Max has never been so thankful. She still locks her door, which Mommy wrings her hands about as a fire hazard, but she sleeps the dreamless slumber of the dead. When there’s no shouting in the house. 

In fact, Billy was almost never home. The girls in Hawkins had big, soft cow-eyes and corn-fed, pale bodies that Billy loved. They would fall into his arms if he so much as winked at them. On a good night, he could bag two girls. There was enough wide spaces in Hawkins that he didn’t have to sneak them home— they could go out to a field somewhere, hiding behind a barn. These Hawkins girls knew all the good spots in town. 

Max saw Billy twice a day— when he drove her to school and when he picked her up. She was fine to skate home but Neil had grabbed Billy by the throat and insisted he drive her to school. This was a weird fuckin’ town; kids disappeared or died without warning. 

He was hungover most mornings when he drove her to school. As he drove her home, he dropped frosty cans of cheap, local beer in her lap, pawing at her in a play at retrieving the can. 

“Stop it!” Max had shouted as Billy slid a cold, wet hand between her thighs. He slapped her there lightly, laughing. “Here!” she picked up the can and held it over to him. “Take it!”

“I don’t like that, _Maxine_ ,” he slurred, looking at her instead of the country roads ahead of them. He pouted theatrically. “Say you’re _sorry_.”

“Billy,” Max said cautiously as he veered on the road. There was almost no cars around, but she could hear a truck horn blaring in the distance.

“Give me a kiss, Max,” he said, tapping his stubbled cheek. The horn was closer now; Max could see a silver semi-truck in the opposite lane that Billy was weaving in and out of. 

“BIlly!” she shouts, truck getting closer and closer. He wouldn’t do it; he wouldn’t kill them.

Would he?

The truck blares its horn as a precaution and Max, terrified and weeping, quickly presses her lips against Billy’s cheek, ending up closer to his temple. “I’m sorry!” she wails. 

Billy weaves back into the correct lane as the truck passes. He whoops and looks over at Max. “That gotcha heart _racin’_ , didn’t it baby!”

Max is panting; her underarms are damp and her knees had nail marks from her clawing at her own flesh in anxiety. “Don’t call me ‘baby’.”

Billy pulls off the road into a clearing in the trees, sighing as he puts the car in park and shuts it off. “You don’t have to be a bitch, Max.”

“I’m _not_!” she whines. 

“Yes you are, okay! And it’s your fucking fault we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere!”

“How is it my fault?” she’s all but shouting now.

“Your _stupid_ mother could have picked any goddamn cousin to get in touch with and she picked the one who lived here!”

“I’ve never even met Ricky! How was I supposed to stop her?”

Billy turns to her, feral in a way she hadn’t seen in a very long time. 

“Get in the backseat, Maxine.”

“N-no.”

He beats the steering wheel. “ _Get in the back of the fucking car!_ ” he screams. 

She does as she’s told.

“Lie down,” he instructs as she perches herself in the seat. He’s checking the area to see if anyone’s around, tugging at his belt. 

“ _Billy_.”

He shushes her, abandoning his belt to grab her by the calves, yanking her down into the seat. Her heart is pounding and she licks her teeth, testing their sharpness if it comes to that. 

“Close your eyes, Max.”

She’s crying now, bracing for the worst. He grabs the hem of her t-shirt in both hands, rolling it up to below her breasts. He tugs her shorts down, low on her hips. Summer is almost over and Max is chilled by the late afternoon air. 

His lips are dry as he presses them to the soft raise of her left hipbone. He’s jammed himself into the backseat with her, the angle awkward and uncomfortable. Max’s eyes are still closed and she counts to herself to try and drown out Billy’s words. 

“ _Maxine_ ,” he breathes against her stomach. “You scare me, girl.”

She goes somewhere else as Billy touches her; this body is not hers. He bites lightly at the slight curve of her waist and she jolts. 

“You didn’t look like this when we first started this little game,” Billy chuckles darkly. “Stick skinny, body like a boy. These _hips_.” He’s idolizing her as he kisses. He bends, even more awkward, to smack a kiss on her inner thigh. “ _Thighs_.” He leans forward, noses at her clothed breast like an animal. “ _Tits._ ”

She can barely hear him; she’s put herself in a trance. Her eyes are open, unblinking, and she looks at the roof of the Camaro. Clinking. Fumbling. Something sticky is pressed against her stomach and Billy groans. He’s worked himself into the cradle between her thighs, sighing in pleasure as he presses himself against her bare skin.

She’s never…seen him. Felt him, like this. She refuses to look down to see what he’s doing— she can feel it and that’s enough. He catches her hand in his, holding it off the seat. He lifts her up so he can work his other arm under her back, draping her hand over his shoulder.

Playing at intimacy again. Playing like this is a normal thing to do. Max almost laughs at the absurdity of it all. She keeps her body still as Billy ruts against her like a beast. 

“‘m still gonna do it,” he mumbles, mouthing at her jaw. “‘m gonna take you away. These girls, thes’ Hawkins girls…they don’t know me. _You._ ” he kisses her neck, groaning in pleasure. “ _You_ know me. You love me. Say it.”

“I love you Billy,” she says robotically.

Another groan; his hips are wild now. “‘m gonna marry you, Maxine. Make you mine forever. Back to California, starting new. On the beach. A baby.” He grunts her name when he’s done and the mess on her stomach scalds her. He collapses, crushing her beneath his weight. She says nothing. She wants to puke. 

He wipes her off with a rag from the trunk, throwing it into the dirt beside the car when he’s satisfied that she’s clean. The sun is starting to set now; there will be hell to pay when they get home. 

Billy spits up blood later that night by the time Neil is done with him. Mommy makes a dentist appointment the next morning for her loose tooth. Max is able to sneak into her shower during the commotion. The water burns her; she refuses to touch her stomach when she soaps up. She lets the run off take care of what’s left on her. 

The next day at school, she meets a boy named Lucas. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter pairs best with "Numb" by Meg Myers and a trip to your local confession.
> 
> also I tried so hard to keep this short but it's getting away from me faster than I can keep up.


	4. Chapter 4

Lucas is _weird_. All of his friends are _weird_. Back in California, she was Just Max. She skated just as hard as the boys did, listened to the same music they did— they didn’t look at her the way Lucas and his friends do. 

Half the time she thinks they’ve never even seen a girl. 

They still call her Max, Mad Max if they feel like it, and let her skate circles around them, literally and metaphorically. Lucas can almost hold his own against her in the arcade but the rest of his friends do that nerdy shit where they dress up and roll dice. No rock ’n’ roll, no skinned knees and bruised elbows, only a cushy, air conditioned basement and the sweet smell of someone’s mom baking cookies upstairs. 

It scares Max at first. She can’t— she _knows_ that wouldn’t happen if she had the party over to her house. The first time she meets Dustin’s mother, Mrs. Henderson had flushed pink with joy at the new little tagalong and gently touched Max’s hair, sighing that she had hair like an elf or a siren. 

The Sinclairs take to Max instantly as well. She could sit up straight at a dinner table and dazzle them with stories of what it was like outside of Hawkins. 

“And what do your parents do, honey?” Mrs. Sinclair had asked.

“My mom stays at home,” she said, suddenly anxious. “My _step_ -dad does something with banks.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

She swallows.

“My step-dad has an older son. He’s a senior in high school.”

Pause.

“I don’t like him.” 

Mrs. Sinclair had smiled at that and asked if she wanted more spaghetti. 

She doesn’t think of Lucas as her boyfriend for a very long time. He never takes her out; they usually are never alone. But sometimes he’ll slide his sweaty hand into hers and sometimes their mouths will bump and they’ll laugh.

It terrifies Max. Lucas’ hands shake if she stands too close to him. He kisses like he isn’t sure how the action works. Max is thankful. He’s a little bit bigger than she is, but his wrists are delicate like hers. He might puff himself up big and tall when he wants to impress her, but he’s all marshmallow fluff on the inside. 

He doesn’t pull her hair.

He doesn’t twist the soft skin of her forearm until she’s convinced it’ll pull apart.

He doesn’t…

He’s not Billy. 

As summer fades into autumn, Billy gets more and more absorbed into Hawkins High. He joins a sports team. He’s doing other extracurriculars, often in classrooms. He thrives on the attention and idolatry he gets from those in the school. And he stops worrying about driving Max home from school. 

Neil’s words and actions were useless against him now. He was a king, a god, among these rural dumbasses who swooned and were entranced by him. He showed up to school one chilly Tuesday morning with a black eye after Neil realized Max was skating home and all that happened was a sophomore named Brenda pulled him into a janitor’s closet instead of going to third period French. 

Billy had not even looked twice at Max in almost six weeks.

With all his attention elsewhere, Max was able to flourish. Her eyes sparkled. Her curls blossomed and even Mommy noticed she seemed to shine brighter.

“I know Hawkins would be good for you, honey,” she had smiled at dinner. Neil had done well at work that day and had allowed them to order pizza for dinner, from a chain in town. With just the three of them at the table, Neil even telling lame jokes, Max could almost pretend they were a proper family. 

Neil and Mommy suspected Max had a “special friend”, as Mommy called him. They listened attentively as Max talked about how much fun they had at the arcade together and how he listened to such _lame_ music but his friends were all really nice. 

Mommy smiled and pushed a lock of Max’s hair off her shoulder. 

“I’m glad you found a boy that’s good for you.”

A few days later, Max finds out truly what a weird place Hawkins is. She gets in a fight with Lucas, who pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. 

“Max,” he says. “We need to talk.”

“You’re shitting me,” is all she says an hour later. Monsters? Weird girls with _brain powers_? The government? In _Hawkins_?

“I know,” Lucas sighs for the millionth time that hour. “J-just ask Mike or Will or Dustin; they’ll tell you everything I just did.”

“I need to go home,” Max says, feeling nauseous. She debating telling Mommy what had happened in Hawkins; surely they would move back to California once she told Neil? 

“Here,” Lucas flashes a grin and sticks his hand out, “I’ll walk you home!”

On the walk home, a blue Camaro speeds past. Max’s knees buckle under her, but she brushes it off to Lucas as tripping over the uneven dirt. He puts his hand on her lower back to steady her and flushes at the contact.

Max almost laughs at his naivety. 

She refuses to cower when she gets home. Mommy and Neil are in the den, watching something on the local news about how pumpkins in Hawkins are rotting en masse. They greet her lightly and Mommy lets her know that she’s making pork chops for dinner. Max manages a smile before heading up the stairs. 

She can hear a shower running upstairs and she sighs as she heads for her room.

It’s her shower that’s running. 

Bile rises hot and poisonous in the back of her throat as the door opens. Max drops her skateboard and backpack and feels the urge to go into a fighting stance, like a karate movie she saw on TV ages ago. She thinks about flying back downstairs, out the front door, but where would she go? They might have lived in a suburb but it was still outside of town. She was a 20 minute skate to Lucas’ house; Will Byers might have been closer. But then what? Show up on their front porch at dinnertime? Have fragile, shoddy Mrs. Byers call Neil and wonder why Max was over so late?

_too late_ , Max thinks as the bathroom door opens. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've given up on keeping this short.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s dripping wet, like an alarm caused him to stumble out of the shower carelessly. She looks at the thick droplets of water falling onto her carpet and realizes he’s wearing nothing but suds he strutted out in. She refuses to look at the darkness just below his navel. She doesn’t need to. He’s come to her in scraps of fabric so sheer with time, well worn and structureless, that she can piece together exactly what waits for her. 

Instead she panics. She knew this day was coming. He couldn’t be content to just hold her forever; crushing his crude hips against her ass or stomach like some kind beast. She focuses on a spot above his head and to the left. 

“Billy,” she said, slow and deliberate as if she can talk sense into him, “what are you doing?”

He padded over to her door, dripping like a wet dog, and he smirked as he shut and latched it.

“I’ve missed you, Maxine,” he said, a hint of a laugh. “I’ve been so busy; you probably thought I forgot about you.”

“Fuckin’ hoped it is more like it,” she said, bile turning into venom. She wasn’t in the mood for any of this tonight. 

“Don’t be a bitch, Max.” He cocks his hip out, stance casual as if he wasn’t naked and dripping wet in her bedroom. 

“Don’t call me a bitch, Billy,” she says, keeping a stern glance at him. She felt like a caged animal, yes, but a caged predator. They were almost dancing circles around each other. Hate uncurled deep in her belly; a reckless feeling spreading into her limbs. She growled and charged, but he caught her easily by the elbow. He spun her into the door and she collided with it, _hard_. Her head rattled as he chuckled. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her roughly into the door once, twice, thrice—

“Come along, _Maxine_ ,” he purred, using her stun to his advantage as she sunk to the ground. He pulled her hoodie off her shoulders, tossing it aside carelessly. Her clothes are wide and loose; they pull off easily under his dirty hands. Max can’t think straight as the world spins around her. The back of her head throbs in anguish and blood pounds behind her eyes.

“No,” she hears herself say distantly, a high little girl voice. 

“You know, Max,” he says, roughly lifting her hips so he can pull her jeans down and off. “You couldn’t avoid this forever. You know, Max. You know.”

She whimpers again as he pulls her shoes off, tossing them crudely onto her bed. He steals a glance at it before turning back to her. “I’ll be so good to you. Make you feel—”

In a moment of clarity, she’s able to crash her elbow into his forearm as he reaches for her tank top and he pulls his hand back as if to strike her. His nostrils flared like a rabbit’s as he breathed heavily, lips tight in rage.

_hit me_ , she thinks. _fucking hit me, you piece of shit_. 

She looked at him, looked him in the eye. She can barely keep hers focused, but she makes herself look at him, at his madness. She can see it fracture and repair under her scrutiny, like he’s fighting something. Maybe something that really wants to protect her. Maybe something that wants to skin her under his gaze.

“Billy,” she pleads. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes I do,” he grunts as he hauls her into his damp arms. She’s still wearing her tank top and sports bra, as well as her panties and one stray sock. “He touched you.”

His words take a second to click with Max. “What?”

“That—” his face contorts “—boy touched you. I saw you walking together. He put his hand on your back. You flinched; you didn’t like it. I knew you wouldn’t like him touching you. You flinched, didn’t you Max? You couldn’t stand his hands on your body.”

“Billy, what are you talking about?”

He doesn’t answer as he carries Max into the bathroom and places her gently on the shower floor. He doesn’t close the curtain and sits next to her petite frame. He grabs her soap, plain and floral, before crouching before her. He soaps up her arms, a strange sense of care in the gesture. He laces their fingers together as his other hand works the soap up her biceps and into the curve of her underarm. 

“He’s my _boyfriend_ , Billy,” Max explains, trying to jerk her arm away. Her skin is slick and slides easily out of Billy’s grip, but she put too much force in the action and her elbow crashes painfully with the tile behind her. “I’m allowed to have a boyfriend.”

_mommy and Neil let me have a boyfriend_. 

“No,” Billy growls; Max can barely hear him over the shower. He bends, working the bar of soap over her thighs and knees. “No boyfriends.” He repeats the phrase over and over again as he washes Max’s legs. He slides her wet sock off and flings it somewhere near the direction of her sink; she hears it smack wetly against ceramic. He holds one foot on his thigh, working bubbles between her toes. He kisses the arch of it, getting soap on his mouth, before repeating the gesture on the other foot. He looks at her through damp hair as he kneels before her.

“No. Fucking. Boyfriends.”

She rolls her eyes at him and he grips her left ankle painfully, jagged nails digging into the skin. “You have girlfriends. You always have girlfriends.”

He jerks her ankle away, splaying her legs in the process. He settles between her knees, kneeling precariously. “Don’t you fuckin’ pretend like those girls mean anything!” He points a thick finger in her face. “They aren’t—”

“What do you want, Billy?”

He’s silent for a long moment. He sighs as he picks up one of Max’s hands and presses his lips to the back of her hand. He rubs his stubbled cheek over where his lips were, brows knit together in pain.

Or pleasure. She doesn’t look between his thighs; she knows by the change in his breathing how this scene is affecting him.

“It’s just us, Max,” he begins, kissing delicately up her arm, nuzzling the crease of her elbow. “You and me. Nobody else.” He cups her face softly, rubbing a calloused thumb over her jaw. 

The moment passes between them as Max looks at Billy. The water is cooling and they’re both on the floor of her shower. Max’s hair is drying uncomfortably, parts of it still dry, and her clothes are probably ruined. 

“Billy,” she whispers. “Let me go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies and "Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner" by Dresden Dolls helped a lot of this chapter. I'm also beginning to wind this story down (the next chapter will finish out season two) but I have written a few other ST fics under my real pseud-- they aren't this fucked but rather tooth rottingly sweet and wholesome.


	6. Chapter 6

Weirdly enough, he listens to Max. He’s home more; the weather is cooling and he can’t spend nearly as much time outdoors as he’d like. Dinners are tense and breakfasts are uncomfortable but it’s almost like how it was…before. 

Billy throws himself entirely into working out and drinking; Max hears him shouting from the garage where he has a couple of weights set up. Neil catches him replacing vodka with water and Mommy almost calls 911 as a result. 

She’s alone with Billy often; Neil works and Mommy retires to bed early if Neil is working late. They don’t watch TV together nor does he try and cobble together dinner like he did when he was 12 and she was 8 and they didn’t know how to exist around each other. He doesn’t put on the records she likes and she ignores him as they do their homework at the dinner table. 

He stares at her, frequently. 

His pencil catches against his bottom lip and he smirks at her as she flips through a math textbook for an equation she missed. She shoots him a confused glance and goes back to her homework. 

“Billy, what are you doing?” She scoffs and can feel sense him deflate, in every way of the word.

She briefly thinks he might be trying to… _charm_ her, using the brawn and the sensuality that works on every other girl in Hawkins. Like he was trying to woo her. Showing up for breakfast coiffed and drenched in cologne was one thing, but showing up for dinner the same way raised Max's eyebrow. He was _offering_ to drive her home. On a dark and sleepy Sunday, he caught her in the hallway and told her he'd take her to the movies or do whatever she wanted that day. He winked and said the whole day was on him, whatever she wanted. She pushed past him and skated to Dustin's to borrow his _Lord of the Rings_ books instead. 

But Max can sleep at night.

But then Billy gets careless and the price is almost too high to pay. She’s been with the party for God knows how long before Mommy and Neil notice she isn’t home.

The pounding on the Byers’ door almost makes Max faint. Demodogs and monsters were one thing; Billy was another. A monster all his own. 

But, for the first time, Max isn’t alone. A handful of nerds and one of Billy’s heartbroken classmates does not a calvary make but it’s the most Max has had in years. She wants to shoo them all away and fight him on her own, but no amount of nail bats and feminine rage could win her that war. She wants to apologize, sob for bringing him here even as it isn’t her fault. Shame, hate, aggression, and fear cycle through her body and she almost cries.

_shouldn’t have come here_ repeats in her mind on a loop she can’t control. 

Lucas is not Max. Lucas is sharpened edges and a different sense of street smarts. He’s a teenage boy in love; dumber than a box of rocks and infinite recklessness. His short nails can’t claw at Billy’s skin but he can fight dirty— a kick to the source of all of Max’s pain— and wriggle out from his grip.

And Steve, Steve had nothing left to lose. An exhausted sense of defeat lurked beneath Steve’s demeanor that evening and he takes Billy’s hits like a champ. But Steve is not Max. Steve is soft, knuckles like a girl, soft underbelly that had never taken a blow. 

Max would later say she cheated, stabbing Billy with that syringe, but sardonic Mike Wheeler told her she was utilizing her resources. 

She almost loses herself when Billy turns on her. His predatory gaze is cloudy, like so many drunken nights he’s crawled to her. He can’t— he _wouldn’t_ hurt her like that in front of everyone at the Byers’ house. 

No.

Instead Billy collapses. Groaning as he fades in and out consciousness. She can hear Steve moaning, pressing dirty fingers to a gash deep in that fluffed coif. Three sets of quick gasps behind her tell her that Mike, Dustin, and Lucas are in various stages of panic and hyperventilation. 

_ This  _ is her war now.

The nail bat is the most beautiful thing Max has ever seen. It’s worn and heavy in her palm, but the weight is familiar, like it was always supposed to be hers. She tells Billy that ehe’s going to leave her and her friends alone now and Billy chuckles, that deep, smug noise in his chest. 

She brings the bat down. She misses her target intentionally but a rusted nail catches on the crotch of his jeans, leaving an almost imperceptible tear when she brings the bat back up.

"Say you understand!" Max shouts, wielding the nail bat. She brings the bat back down, close enough this time that his hips jump away and he grunts in shock. 

“I understand,” he whispers. He goes to repeat himself but the sedation pulls him into darkness. 

Max takes the nail bat home. It’s a long, _long_ night before she gets there. She parks the Camaro down the block and leaves the keys in the glovebox before she climbs a back trellis to her bedroom. She rests the bat in a corner by her bed before getting in the shower. 

She sleeps for 15 hours. 

When Neil interrogates her on where she was, she smoothly lies about how an Atari battle got away from her and the party and gosh, what if she does dishes for the next two weeks to make up for forgetting to call home?

“A _month_.”

Max salutes in agreement. 

Billy stumbles home three nights later, still in his clothes that night from the attack at the Byers’. He opts to punch Neil in the solar plexus when Neil asks where the fuck he’s been. 

“Your hair is so pretty, Maxine,” Mommy says as she pulls that damned brush through Max’s curls. “I was worried about you for awhile. You looked like a walking corpse for a minute!”

“Yeah,” Max forces a chuckle. “Puberty was rough.”

“You’re going to be the prettiest girl at the Snow Ball,” Mommy muses as she affixes a large clip into her curls. 

Through the reflection in the vanity mirror, she can see Billy stalk past her room. She keeps her expression neutral but he sees the bat next to her bed and flashes daggers at her before continuing on.

“Poor Billy,” Mommy continues. “Always wondered what goes on in that boy’s head. He seemed sweet to you for a minute, Maxine. What happened?”

Max shrugs. “Guess I got older.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Sacrilege" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the full experience. 
> 
> I was originally going to end it here but I did re-watch season three again and got a fantastic plot thread to pull at for the next chapter or two.


	7. Chapter 7

The greatest thing to happen to Max is a bizarre young woman named Jane Hopper, affectionally called Eleven. Whatever Max was, Eleven was the opposite. Max was worldly, a cynical old bitch at the age of fourteen. Eleven was innocent, wide eyed and eager to please. She balanced awkward only skateboards, holding on to Max for support, and together they watched movies the boys in the party would gag and roll their eyes at. 

She also had powers that Max would kill for. She can’t help but feel like Billy would not have come to her twice if Max had the ability to throw him out of a window with her mind. Deep down, she thinks the challenge might have made him do it more. 

But then something happens, and Billy is…not Billy anymore. When delicate Will Byers presses his fingers to the back of his neck and says “he’s here”, dark eyes wide with fear, Max wants to slap him in the face and retort “no shit, Sherlock”. 

Will was not home the night Billy attacked the rest of the party; he’s only heard stories from the rest of the party of how Max attacked him with Steve Harrington’s nail bat. Max doesn’t need to be told Billy is the host of a monster; she’s known about it for years.

She knows this is a real evil, an evil from another world, but the irony of the situation is not lost on her and she wants to laugh at the situation. Of course Billy becomes the vessel for an extraterrestrial horror. 

What a joke. 

She was initially very…hesitant around Steve Harrington and later Jonathan Byers. Jonathan had wandering eyes and skittering hands, but thankfully only for Nancy Wheeler; thinking his was being sneaky when he slid his hand up Nancy’s tanned thigh at holiday dinner, surrounded by everyone and their parents. 

But he accepted Max as just another member of the party. She stayed late at the Byers’ one night with Jonathan, watching old horror movies together. Joyce wouldn’t allow the tapes in the house and Will was too chicken-shit to watch them. They shared two bowls of popcorn and swore not to tell people when the other jumped or hid their face in a pillow. 

He listened to weird, weird music— Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths, The Cure, Adam Ant— and loaned Max records that made Mommy ask if she would please turn that down, sweetie? as Neil lamented that wasn’t _music_. 

And Steve, Steve was the antithesis of Billy. Steve loved women, he _loved_ women but he loved _women_. He would crane his neck for a pretty 19 year old at the pharmacy; a charming 22 year old at the food court in the mall. In his own way, he loved Max. Just as he loved everyone else in the party, in their own ways. Just like Max loved her friends for who they were and what they could do. 

Even fragile little Will; something about him tuned into something feral in Max. She wanted to wield that nail bat against anyone who had ever hurt him. She suspects he’d let her, too. 

Dustin made her laugh, harder than anyone had ever made her laugh. He made old references only she understood and together they could quote entire movies, saying nothing but scripted dialogue for hours. 

Leadership was the biggest rift between her and Mike but it’s also what brought them so close together. They both had everyone else’s best interests at heart, but went about it in different ways. Max opted to charge, guns a-blazin’ and questions later, whereas Mike was more of a strategist. Neither was right, neither was wrong, but for fuck’s sakes could game nights be rough when they got going. 

But Steve would slide up to her when she skated around town, saying Henderson told him she learned a new skate trick so could he see it? He indulged her love of maraschino cherries, generous scoops of them into her sorbet as Lucas gagged and asked if she even _knew_ how maraschino cherries were made. 

Sometimes, Max looks at Lucas and wants to cry. He was still such a child in so many ways, naive and protected. He thought kissing with a tongue was the most scandalous thing you could ever do and really did not acknowledge that Max existed between the collarbone and the knees. He’d fling himself as far away from her as he could if one of his parents came into the room and could never seem to pull his foot out of his mouth.

_I’m no good_ she wanted to wail, pushing Lucas away. _someone hurt me; I’m not worthy. they destroyed me; you need someone whole._

But she imagined that Lucas would cry with her, hold her gently and ask if it was okay to touch her shoulders. And then he would probably get murdered by Billy in an attempt to fight him for Max’s honor back. 

But when Eleven, holding her melting ice cream cone like a sword, proudly tells Mike Wheeler she dumps his ass, Max feels like her heart could just burst. She’d never really had a girlfriend, finding the girls in California too shallow and prissy for her tastes. But she thinks Eleven could use some shallowing, a sprinkle of prissiness. The fucking girl wore the police chief’s hand-me-downs and had no idea what mascara was. 

Eleven needed Max. And in a sense, Max needed Eleven. 

During a sleepover, Max has a flashback. Eleven had rolled towards her, slinging a sleepy arm over Max’s torso and cuddling into her friend’s back. Max woke up with a shout, rolling out of bed and dropping to the floor. She groped blindly for the nail bat as Eleven switched on the bedside lamp.

“Max?” Eleven rubbed her eyes. “What are you doing?”

“N-nightmare,” Max stuttered. “J-jus’ a nightmare.” She dropped the bat and got back in her bed, warm from the sleeping bodies. Eleven hesitates but eventually Max moves closer and lets her friend embrace her.

“I get nightmares,” Eleven confides, letting Max rest her head on her chest. “About my papa. He was monster. A monster. But he’s gone. And he can’t hurt me. Not anymore.”

“But you still dream the monster comes back for you?”

“Every night,” Eleven admits. “I dream of him every night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're finally almost done! we don't get a lot of indication about what Max and Billy's lives were like between seasons two and three, so I'm pulling away from the Billy narrative from this chapter. it'll come back for the next two chapters because my two shot has turned into a fucking nine shot. my bad.
> 
> musical choices: "Crazy on You" by Heart. the influence isn't that obvious in the chapter; I just love that song a lot. 
> 
> I also don't believe that Brenner's abuse of Eleven was sexual in any nature, fwiw.


	8. Chapter 8

“I’m…at the beach,” Eleven whispers, feeling the phantom sensation of sand between her soft toes.

“California,” Max says quietly. “Billy was happiest in California.”

Under her blindfold, Eleven’s brows pull together in confusion. She treads the sand, finding a small home hidden near some rocks. The location of the home makes no sense, built almost in the middle of what must be a very popular beach, but Eleven finds herself walking closer and closer to it. The structure of the home is fuzzy and Eleven finds she must focus on it to keep it materialized. 

This isn’t a memory. This is a dream. 

A dream Billy has had often, the path of it carved into the very matter of his thoughts. She smells food as she gets closer, bacon and starches with the citric sting of orange juice. She sees an open garage and a man bent over the open hood of an old hot rod, a dirty rag shoved into the back pocket of his dirtier jeans. The muscles in his bare back work as he cranks at something deep in the car’s inner workings. 

“Honey!” a feminine voice calls from within the home. “Breakfast is almost ready! Are you done with that damn car?”

Eleven is on the porch now. She opens the front door and is greeted by a shabby yet comfortable home. The furniture is mismatched but homey. There are pictures on a mantle but Eleven can’t make out what they are; a detail Billy wasn’t concerned with. 

She wanders through the home; it can’t be any bigger than the cabin where she lives now. There’s one bedroom; a crib and a baby’s cot are set up next to the large bed. The bed is made neatly, even if yesterday’s sundress is waded up at the foot of it. 

The bathroom contains a tub that should not fit in a home this size, the style of it clashes painfully with the rest of the house, but Eleven notices a large variety of bath oils lining the rim of the tub. Some for relaxation, other for aches and pains. Some are erotic. 

As she heads back to the living room, an infant babbles somewhere to her left, a chubby innocent laying on a small blanket on the floor. The baby smiles, turning its head as a woman in a long white sundress enters the room.

“There you are, girlie!” she coos, swooping the baby into her arms. “Let’s go get Daddy!”

“El,” Max’s voice echoes distantly. “What do you see?”

“A home,” Eleven whispers. “A woman and a baby.” She tries to focus on the woman but Max’s voice is distracting her.

“Billy must be dreaming about his childhood again,” Max sighs. “Probably the only time he was happy.”

“Max!”

“Sorry. Shutting up.”

Eleven turns a corner sharply. Had she been corporeal, she would have ran into the man coming in from the garage. He passes through the essence near her left shoulder, pulling a grimy t-shirt over his head in the process. He runs a hand through his short dark hair before heading to the kitchen and washing his hands. 

“Smells good, babe,” he says, looking at a pan on the stove. “I’m almost done with the car out back. Coupla more tweaks and it should be good to re-sell. I was talkin’ to, uh, Patty Black at the grocery store the other day, she lemme know her husband might be interested in buyin’ the car. I’m meetin’ him on Wednesday to talk about it.”

“Sweetie!” the woman gushes. “That’s wonderful!”

The dream blurs here, Billy’s trying to fill in gaps in the fantasy. Eleven feels a roll of nausea as the images swim before her eyes. The images refocuses but is still soft and vague. Eleven’s eyes, closed and covered, throb violently as she forces herself to focus on what she sees. She feels blood roll from both nostrils, catching on her lip and forcing down her chin. 

The baby is now in a high chair, cooing and sucking on its fingers. The woman in the sundress is in the kitchen with the man, laying her head on his shoulder affectionately, looking out the kitchen window to the waves on the beach. He reaches for her large and swollen belly and laughs. 

“He kicked! Babe, that’s amazing!”

“Billy,” the woman’s voice is stern but playful. Eleven hears her smack his delighted hands away. “You don’t know it’s a boy.”

“Billy?” Eleven asks nobody.

“Did you find him? Where is he? Where is Heather?”

“Nancy, shut up!”

It’s Billy, but he’s…older. Not quite a grown man but no longer a youth. His hair is almost shaved and his jaw is darkened with stubble. No jewelry, no open shirts. Just a man who smiles brightly as he digs through the phantom refrigerator for butter and jam. 

“Can you get me the milk, Billy?” the woman asks. Her shape is still vague and anonymous, like Billy only wants Eleven to see what he’ll allow. 

Billy passes a small carton of milk to the woman, cradling her belly for her as she drinks heavily from the container. “I might need to make another midnight run to the grocery store for more milk. And more peanut butter. And more cherry ice cream. The girl who works nights probably thinks I’m on drugs!”

“I love you, Billy.” The woman sighs happily, licking her lips. A delicate wedding ring catches the sun as the woman sets her hand on the counter, reaching to throw the empty carton away. She laughs before kissing his cheek delicately. She shoos him to go sit down as she busies herself with preparing plates. 

If Eleven focuses, focuses harder and harder, she can find a sense of warmth pulling at what’s left of Billy’s heart. This dream, this whatever it is, has been the only source of happiness in Billy’s life, for years Eleven estimates by how ingrained the images are into his thoughts. He must think about this daily, if not multiple times a day. 

_how odd,_ Eleven thinks to herself. This was not the Billy they knew, Flayed or not. He didn’t talk about pregnant housewives and baby daughters; cozy houses and domestic comfort. How much did Billy yearn for this? How much had his heart ached for this simple act of home? Did the woman change every time, to whatever girl of the week caught his eye?

“Hey princess,” Billy says softly as he sat next to the baby. The baby latched chubby fists around his thumb and index finger, giggling and wiggling in the chair. “How’s it going?” He kisses the top of the baby’s head, turning to look at the woman in the sundress as she balances two plates full of breakfast.

The image warps into crystal clarity; Billy is showing her everything now. The woman is beautiful, glowing with a healthy pregnancy and the promise of more to come. She’s still young but she radiates happiness as the scene before her; husband and baby in a cozy home. Her face is freckled and her hair is long and— 

“Max!” Eleven shrieks as she pulls the blindfold off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the thread that pulled at me during my rewatch of season three. I actually skipped a chapter and a half to write this and then filled in the gaps so I wasn't posting out of order. this is actually my favorite chapter so far!
> 
> musical enhancement: "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"-- Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty.


	9. Chapter 9

William Hargrove’s official cause of death is attributed to the smoke and destruction at Starcourt Mall. A fallen piece of support beam was close enough in dimension to the gaping hole in his chest to where the Hawkins coroner shrugged his bony shoulders and pieced together that the young man was unfortunately impaled. 

Max knows it’s bullshit but doesn’t correct anyone. If anyone asks, the official cover story for the gang was they had snuck into a showing of _Back to the Future_ and had just gotten caught up in the hubbub of the ensuing fire and destruction. Some made it out alive. Some didn’t. 

Neil grieves, in his own way, and so does Mommy. They take a week long vacation back home to give Billy’s ashes to his mother, leaving Max home at her insistence. She swore she’d stay with the Byers’ while they were gone. 

She only sees Joyce Byers’ when the woman drops off a casserole, a midwestern attempt at sympathy, the morning after Neil and Mommy leave for the airport. Max smiles and swears she’ll give her mother the recipe and Mrs. Byers offers an awkward smile in return. 

The casserole feeds Max for a week.

The first night Neil and Mommy leave, a strange sense of emptiness fills Max. The home still smelled like him; cheap cologne and beer, leaving Max’s heart in her throat as she wandered her empty home. She was waiting for him to pop out from behind a door; shout “boo!” and drag her to her bedroom. 

An owl hoots from outside and Max screams, throwing an arm out in defense and accidentally elbowing a doorframe. The soft wood splinters under her and Max collapses sobbing onto the floor in the hallway. She had lost weight in the aftermath of the attack, finding herself nauseous at every turn, and Mommy swore she was seeing a doctor when they got back from California. Max burned inside. 

El Hopper was there for him in his last moments, pressing a tender kiss to his forehead as the evil consumed him from the inside out. Her dark eyes shone with tears ad she sobbed as she touched the final humanity in Billy as Max looked on. Even in the connection of the gesture, seeing her best friend pinned under Billy’s sweating, stinking, rotting body activated something in Max and she almost ran out to grab her friend by that injured ankle and drag her away from the monster and the Mind Flayer. 

Will screamed in pain as the remaining strings of the Mind Flayer in his body burned out as the beast was annihilated, shrieking and convulsing as Jonathan and Nancy tried to soothe him. Lucas had wrapped skinny arms around his sister, trying to shield her curious eyes as the Mind Flayer ripped out Billy’s chest cavity. Even Robin, sweet and sarcastic Robin, grabbed at Steve with damp hands, fear rendering her mute. Mike, enraged and desperate, had tried to lunge onto the floor to save El as she grappled with Billy, but Dustin held him back, calling him a fuckin’ dumbass with as much love and affection as he could. 

In Billy’s final moments, Max heard him say one thing. 

“ _Maxine_.”

The party interpreted his desperate pleas for his step-sister as Billy clinging to what was left of his humanity. They compared it to Lucas crying out for Erica in the same situation. But Max looks at Lucas, shushing a hysterical Erica, wiping her tears away and telling her Ma and Dad were going to be at the hospital when they got there. Erica had grabbed Lucas’ hand, nodding and sobbing. 

Lucas was not Billy. Erica was not Max. 

Despite their differences and attitudes, Lucas and Erica loved each other. Just as Nancy loved Mike, wrapping her dirty arms around his neck, checking him for injuries or trauma. 

“I saw it!” Nancy had cried, holding Mike by the face. “It attacked us in the hospital!”

“Are you okay?” Mike gasped. “Did it hurt you?”

Nancy shook her head, pressed her lips together as to not cry, and embraced her brother. Mike, after a moment, embraced his sister back. 

Jonathan was holding Will. The boy had crumpled after the toll of the Mind Flayer’s destruction and Jonathan had propped him up against the front counter, kneeling in a way that bent one ankle at an uncomfortable angle. Max heard both his knees creak as he bent, but he seemed unaffected by the pain or discomfort. He pressed against Will’s eyelids, checking his brother’s pupils and responses. 

“H-he’s okay,” Jonathan stuttered. “Just out.” He picked up Will, as if the boy was a ragdoll, and did not set him down until their mother showed up. 

Outside, among the ambulances and fire crews, Mrs. Wheeler, worn down with a sense of guilt that Max can’t place, grabs Max and pulls her into a crushing hug. She heard what happened to Billy, she whispered into Max’s hair, and she was so, so, so sorry that it had happened. She said she felt like she could have stopped it. 

Max, who has no idea what pretty and perfumed Mrs. Wheeler is talking about, lets her friend’s mom hold her for what feels like an eternity. 

Two weeks later, El Hopper invites herself over for a sleepover. It’s a few days before she’s set to move with the Byers and she tells Max she wants to see her before she goes. Max, grateful for the company, smiles as El shows up with a backpack full of candy and tapes. 

The night is wonderful. Neil and Mommy behave, even as Neil interrogates El about what happened at the mall that night. Mommy tries to stop him, but Neil leans in.

“How _exactly_ did a support beam manage to hit my boy, huh? Can you tell me that?”

El stutters, eyes bouncing to Max and Neil. “The fire…explosion.” She gestures. “We saw a piece of ceiling fall and…he couldn’t hear us as we told him to move. He fell.”

Neil contemplates as he chews. El’s eyes tear for extra effect. Eventually he shrugs and the conversation switches to when school starts back up again. 

Eleven goes quiet as the girls prepare for bed. Max gets underneath her covers but El opts to sit at the vanity, facing Max. 

“I saw,” Eleven starts, pointing at her own forehead. “in Billy.”

Max swallows. “You told us you saw his mom at the beach.”

Silence. More silence. Max isn’t sure what to say as the moment stretches. Instead El turns and rubs a thumb over the scorched cigarette burn on the vanity.

“Max,” she says. “I _saw._ ”

Terror drops into Max’s core as Eleven picks at the burn on the table. 

“He…” 

“Yeah,” Max says simply. 

“I thought it was just a girl, first,” El says slowly. “I saw,” pointing to her forehead again, “I saw all the time. Kissing. Touching.” The other word sticks on El’s naive tongue. “But then I saw,” she steps away from the vanity to walk over and touch Max’s headboard. “I saw this.” She walks to the bathroom, opens the door. “And this.”

“And you thought why is he dreaming of his sister’s bedroom, yeah?” Max offers.

El nods. “You were 11, weren’t you?”

Max nods shortly, a jerk of her head. "When he started, yeah. Seems like it was ages ago."

“It doesn’t make it better,” El says. “But I felt him here,” she touches her heart, “whenever he thought of you. He loved you.”

A pause.

“He didn’t think he was hurting you. But he was."

“What all did you see?” Max whispered, clutching the blanket in both fists. Tears burn her eyes and blur her friend’s shape. 

“Driving. Driving to California. S-stopping in Last Vegas—”

“Las Vegas.”

“—Las Vegas and getting m-m-marr…” El can’t bring herself to say the word. “Preg—” El clears her throat and awkwardly rubs the back of her neck. She wants to tell Max everything she saw but also knows she can’t. “I saw everything. In the chair—”

“El,” Max breathes. “Please stop.”

El gestures at the bed and Max nods, pushing the covers back. El quivers as she settles in next to her friend, scooting closer and holding Max’s small hand in her even smaller one. 

“I don’t miss him,” Max admits. “Yet I can’t stop crying.”

“He was a monster,” El says with a shrug. “Yet sometimes people miss monsters.”

“Do you miss your monster?”

“Sometimes,” El admits. “But not anymore. Someone else loved me the way he thought he did. I didn’t need the monster anymore. So I don't miss him.” 

“Are you saying I should _love_ Lucas?” Max tries to joke. 

It works; El giggles. So does Max.

“What I’m saying,” El says, “is the monster isn’t coming back. And someone does love you. Lots of people love you. You don't need the monster to love you.”

“Yeah,” Max smiles as she and El settle in for the night. “No more monsters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we made it!
> 
> I dedicate this entire work to everyone who read, kudos'd, commented, anything like that. you guys are the absolute best and I couldn't have done this without each and every one of you.
> 
> I know the general consensus was for Billy to make it through to the end, but I couldn't figure out how to make that work with the story. I know it became a lot more Eleven-centric these last few chapters, but I'm still very happy with how this little story turned out.
> 
> thank you again, everyone who read!! <3 <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> sorry god.


End file.
